Today goes down in history -- a RM1.00 per litre price increase for my diesel SUV...

6:15pm Petronas Cyberjaya 11:31pm Shell Putrajaya


11:42pm still in Queue at Shell Putrajaya



Just a little below 1/2 tank before filling up, and Police presence everywhere at most if not all fuel stations.



And my last fill of diesel at RM1.58 per litre. At 12:00 midnight, barely 7 hours after news of a hike in fuel prices, the price per litre had increased RM1.00 per litre of diesel from RM1.58 to RM2.58. A lot of Malaysian do not understand why the increase had to be so immediate - i.e. a short 7 hours of warning to the public is more than premature, it borders on as if the increase is made to shock everyone, leaving people no time to react, or in this case, get to pumps quickly enough.

Huge traffic crawls emerged from 6pm till 12midnight on the day of the 4th of June.

And here is some sharing from the many news I read about Malaysia and fuel.

First of all these are some facts that are poorly if not at all, revealed to Malaysia's people.

1. Malaysia is a nett exporter of crude oil. The Malaysian government had consistently and blatantly publisize that they are on the people's side by subsidizing on fuel, to be a bit more exact, RM56 billion annually.

Now this is disinformation because this so called ‘subsidy’ is actually the additional income that the government would have, could have (call it whatever you wanna) obtained extra or "earned" if it had exported all of our crude oil production.

2. The lie is that there is no escalating out of control cost that the government say that they are bearing for the people. And the government also does not lose any money "subsidizing" its people because it is Malaysia's own explored crude oil we are talking about and and we are hence not paying anything to anyone (at least significantly) for our own oil supply.

3. In essence, the so called removing of fuel subsidies is basically forcing the people to bear the cost of the country's own resources that were if otherwise would have been sold at international prices - at a much higher price and for obscene profits for the oil companies (read Petronas et all); profits unheard of in the history of oil exploration and trade in the world.

4. Now most of Malaysia's people (except for those 'connected' with and to a particular dialect/race/religion) will suffer because of this sudden hike, especially the lower income. Poverty has no skin colour.

Quoting someone similiarly in-the-know "The hike in oil prices has not caused hardships to our government. On the contrary it has already earned record profits for Petronas. And now our government is going to squeeze even more profits by squeezing the rakyat. Put it bluntly, the Barisan Nasional government will get filthy rich at the expense of the rakyat."


Video clip edition of the experience for posterity.